Episode 7: Killing Your Darlings: The Art of Cutting

I kept a document I called the Ash Codex. Every scene I cut, every chapter I removed, every passage I loved but could not justify, went into the Ash Codex.By the time The Reader of the Empress was finished, the Ash Codex contained over ten thousand words. The manuscript began at ninety six thousand. The final version came in at eighty five thousand.Some of it was good. Some of it was the best prose I had ever written. None of it belonged in the book.In this episode, I show you exactly what I cut and why, including the terminal fragments that stretched the novel past its natural ending.We cover:→ Motif saturation: why the mirror appeared in nearly every chapter and had to be reduced to three→ The Red Book journal entries: cutting from twelve to six→ Terminal fragments: archiving eight thousand words of alternate endings→ The load bearing test: identifying decorative versus structural content→ The three pass cutting method→ How to create your own Ash CodexCutting is not punishment. It is craft. The reader will never miss what they never saw.—Resources:Custom GPT and Companion Workbook: rondanini.com/architect-method—Questions? Reach out at rondanini.com